Upscale images on your Chromebook with Upscayl
If you’ve ever wanted to upscale images on your Chromebook, you’ll want to check out Upscayl. It’s a useful Flatpak app for Linux that simplifies the process of enhancing image quality. Here’s how you can use it on your Chromebook with the Linux developer environment.
How to Enable Linux on Your Chromebook
If you’re using a Chromebook that supports virtualization, you can make use of this feature to run Linux apps. However, you must enable Linux support on your Chromebook before you can use this feature.
To enable this feature, start by clicking on the clock in the Chrome OS dash. After selecting it, click the “gear” icon to load up the Chrome OS settings. Then, find the “Advanced” area, and click the arrow to reveal its settings.
Inside the “Advanced” area, find “Developer.” Then, inside the “Developer” area, find “Linux development environment.” You can then activate this environment by selecting the “Turn on” button. After you click the “Turn on” button, Chrome OS will download and install a Linux LXC container to your Chromebook.
When the installation of the LXC container finishes, a terminal app will automatically open on the Chrome OS desktop. This terminal will allow you to interact with the Chrome OS Linux container. Find “Penguin,” and select it with the mouse.
By clicking the “Penguin” button, you’ll gain access to the terminal interface. Inside the terminal app, execute the command “apt update” to refresh the container’s software sources. This command ensures that you have the most up-to-date software information.
sudo apt update
After refreshing the software sources in your Chrome OS Linux container, you’ll need to install any pending software updates, patches, etc. Use the following command in the terminal to do this.
sudo apt upgrade -y
How to install Upscayl on a Chromebook
Chromebook users will need to install the Upscayl application on their system via a Flatpak package. However, before you can install Upscayl, you must enable the Flatpak runtime and set up the Flathub app store.
To start, open up the Chrome OS terminal app. Once it is open, select the “Penguin” option to load up the Linux container. Then, from here, use the apt install command to set up the “flatpak” package.
sudo apt install flatpak
Once the “Flatpak” package is installed and set up, you need to enable the Flathub app store. You can do this by entering the following flatpak remote-add command in the Chrome OS terminal window.
flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
With Flathub enabled on your system, you can install the Upscayl application on your Chrome OS system using the flatpak install command.
flatpak install flathub org.upscayl.Upscayl
With the app installed on your Chromebook, you can launch it. To open up Upscayl, look for it in the “Linux apps” folder in the Chrome OS app menu.
How to upscale images on your Chromebook with Upscayl
To start, open up the Upscayl app. You can open up Upscayl by searching for it in the Chrome OS app menu. Once it is open, launch the Chrome OS Files app. Then, browse for all of the images you wish to upscale and place them in the “Linux files” folder.
After placing all of the images in this folder, go back to Upscayl and find the “Select Image” button below “Step 1.” Select the “Select Image” button to open up the file browser.
Once you’ve selected your photo, it will upload it into the Upscayl app and display it so that you can see it. Next, find “Select Upscaling Type” under “Step 2.” Then, click the button to choose your type of upscaling method. Optionally, you can select “Double upscayl” to upscale your image twice.
When you’ve chosen your upscale method, move on to “Step 3” and select the “Set Output Folder” button. You’ll then need to configure where the Upscayl application will output upscaled images using the built-in file browser.
When you’ve configured steps 1 through 3, make your way to the “Upscayl” button and click on it with the mouse. By selecting this button, the Upscayl application will begin upscaling your image file. When the process is complete, you’ll be able to access your upscaled images in the output folder set previously.
Batch upscaling
If you wish to upscale more than one image at a time, follow the instructions above. However, click the slider that says “Batch Upscale.” Selecting this slider will allow you to upload a folder of images rather than one image at a time.
